Sunday, April 17, 2011

Tortilla Crusted Goat Cheese and Asparagus Quiche

 Oh my, it was delicious. And ever so easy!  First you cook some asparagus in salt water until just tender. Then rinse it off with water and set it aside. Wipe out the pan, you'll need it again.
 Line a pie plate with 4 wheat tortillas. No need to grease it.
 Oh, I forgot to photograph the cooking of the onions and mushrooms in olive oil. But you have seen that sort of thing before. Mix in the asparagus, salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle the cheese over it.
 Whisk the eggs, and then add the yogurt.
  Pour it into the shell.
Bake, or in my case, bake a little too long! 
The tortilla was the weak link. No one but me liked it for a crust. It seems like this would be quite delicious in a pie crust or even just in ramekins. The innards were magnificent tasting!


Thanks to Rachel Ray for this one!

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 375. Grease pie plate and overlap tortillas to make a crust. Place on rimmed baking sheet.
  2. Fill a large skillet 1/3 of the way with salted water and bring to a boil. Add asparagus and cook 1 minute. Drain, rinse under cold water and pat dry.
  3. Wipe out skillet and add olive oil over med-hi heat. Add onions and mushrooms, season with salt and pepper and cook until mushrooms are golden, about 3 min. Add asparagus, season with salt and pepper.
  4. Put vegetable mixture in pie pan and spread evenly in tortilla crust. Crumble cheese on top.
  5. In medium bowl, whisk eggs and yogurt, pour in tortilla crust. Bake 30 minutes until lightly golden and set in the center. Let rest for 10 minutes before serving.

ROASTED EGGPLANT and Pampered Chef

I made this two months ago. I can't find the recipe. It doesn't end well.
Please don't judge...


So, of course you start with eggplant! There was also zuchini and a ton of spices. And rice. 
Special rice.
FORBIDDEN RICE!
Don't screw with forbidden rice! This dish was cursed because I dared to not heed the warning of the forbidden rice...
But the eggplant was delicious and easy and I plan to continue to cook eggplant like this because, YUM!
Brush with olive oil.
Face down on a cookie sheet. (This cookie sheet is my lovely Pampered Chef stoneware cookie sheet.)
Flip them over and cook them some more. Maybe 20 minutes? I don't remember. Look it up, this is the internet!
Meanwhile back at the ranch...
Cook onions in olive oil.
Add zuchini.
Oops, there should be a ton of garlic in there too.
Add these benign looking spices.
And these ones too...
You should also be cooking the 
FORBIDDEN RICE
at the same time...
Cook all the spicy vegetables.
Add the
FORBIDDEN RICE!
Now scoop out your previously roasted eggplant and add it.
Put it all in your brand new PAMPERED CHEF baking dish.
Cook it until it is beautiful.
Then realize it is so spicy that you are going to die and have yogurt, nuts, crackers and apricots instead. Read your nice book and have a beer, too. 
You need it to deal with the disappointment!

Now the thing is, the consistancy of this was lovely and it was quite healthy. I don't remember what all the spices were, but I am pretty sure if I use brown rice instead of forbidden and if I cut the spices down, this is something I would cook and eat with pleasure.

Also, if you want Pampered Chef stuff, let me know and I will give you a link to Elizabeth's website. Oh heck, here it is...


Vacation! All I ever wanted...

So, what's two months or so between friends?

As I was looking at recipes to try out during April vacation there was a nagging thought in the back of my head, "Didn't I used to have some sort of blog where I talked about recipes?" And sure enough there was! As a matter of fact, I have some recipies archived that I never even posted. So through the miracle of the public school vacation calendar I will present some "previously on..." recipes and, hopefully, have the gumption to document this week's cooking.

That is, of course, between watching movies, reading and generally goofing off. It is spring after all!

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Panko Fish

So apparently it has taken me awhile to recover from the carnage of the last recipe. Today I am putting up an easy, healthy, delicious recipe that I make fairly often and never disappoints!

The ingredients! I usually just make this with fish, but I had some leftover chicken and thought I'd see how it turned out with this recipe, too.

First you make dijonaise - half mustard, half mayo - it doesn't matter what kind, and you can certainly use light or fat free. It is really just there to add a little zip and to hold the panko on the fish.

Put your panko in the bowl and add some lemon zest. I am this close (picture tiny, pinchy fingers) to getting an actual zester. I love the zest. I am zesty!

Oh how I hate cleaning up. For this dish, I line the pan with tinfoil and spray it with Pam-substitute. I have not tried this on my stoneware cookie sheet because this works so well. But I will give it a shot someday. If you have tried fish on the stoneware let me know if it absorbs the smell.

Spread the spread on your fish. Then you will smush it spread side down into the panko and lemon zest.

Put it in the oven and cook it.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished project. I ate it too damn quick! But it was beautiful. Golden brown and delicious. Try it! But not the chicken. Usually I love chicken, I don't know what is going on with us... But compared to the light, sweet fish, the chicken was kind of clunky. I will love chicken again soon, I am sure. You'll be the first to know!

Panko Baked Fish

Crispy topping on fish with a bit of zest.

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rinse fish and pat dry.
  2. Combine mustard and mayo, spread on a piece of fish.
  3. Put the lemon zest in the panko crumbs.
  4. Put fish, topping side down, into the panko mixture.
  5. Spray pan with cooking spray and place fish topping side up on the pan.
  6. Bake at 425 for 15-20 minutes.
  7. Let sit 5 minutes before serving.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Chili Dogs vs. Cauliflower: A Cautionary Tale

I thought it would be fun to compare what my non-nutrition--concerned husband was making for dinner with what I, the newly enlightened, was preparing. His plan was to make the most degrading of all snack-foods-trying-to-pretend-to-be-a-meal - chili dogs! I, on the other hand had devised a beautiful, healthy, gourmet menu featuring cauliflower, portobello mushrooms, onions and white meat chicken.


So here are the combatants. Which sets looks like it is going to be a fast slop fest and which looks like it will tantalize the tastebuds?

These ingredients look like old men smoking cigars outside a boxing match.

These ingredients are the culinary equivalent of Daniel Day Lewis making a movie about how much he loves me.

So first the mashed cauliflower. You cut it, steam it...

Add some stuff to it and mash it.


It comes out looking like kind of grainy mashed potatoes, but with fewer carbs and calories. And it was actually quite delicious.

These are the chicken pieces. Don't they look all innocent?

I put them on the grill. Didn't marinate them. Didn't spice them. Just sacrificed them to George Foreman without so much as a by-your-leave... Don't worry, I paid in the end.

 Meanwhile, I cooked the portobellos with a red onion. This is the starting point of the most delicious sandwich in the world. I will post THAT recipe at the end of this little story. It never disappointed me... (Ooh, is that foreshadowing?)

Something happens when they get cooked together. Until this very night, I had known nothing other than happiness when they were conjoined.

They look like they wouldn't harm anyone, don't they?

The bowl of doom! It tasted so bad! The cauliflower was actually quite delicious and I brought the rest of it in for lunch throughout the week and it was yummy with some gorgonzola. But the chicken was tough and tasted like dust. The mushrooms and onions weren't bad, but certainly not good enough to save this monstrosity.
I really wish I had gone for the chili dog.

Here is the cauliflower recipe from Group Recipes:

1 head of cauliflower
1 T. butter
1 clove garlic
1/4 c skim milk
1/4 t. red pepper
salt and pepper to taste
  1. Steam the cauliflower for 10 minutes until very tender.
  2. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, add the butter and garlic.
  3. Once the garlic becomes fragrant, add the milk, red pepper, salt, pepper, tender cauliflower and mix until combined.
  4. Mash and enjoy

Here is the Portobello sandwich recipe I think it was from gourmet magazine or something I usually just eyeball it, but here it is.

Portobello and Onion Sandwiches with Basil Mayonaise

Simply the most delicious sandwich I have ever eaten in my life!

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat olive oil over medium heat. Add mushrooms and onions. Cover and cook 7 minutes or until onion is tender.
  2. Combine mayo and basil (and black pepper to taste). Spread 1 T. on each bread slice. Put half of the onion/mushroom mixture on 2 of the slices with 1 slice of cheese.
  3. For extra deliciousness you can make these into paninis with a Foreman grill so that the cheese melts.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Watermelon and Tomato Salad

Oh my gosh, it was like summertime in a bowl! I made this last week during a blizzard and it was magical. 

Here is my strange set of ingredients It really seems like one of these things doesn't belong. And it is big and juicy and rhymes with potterfelon. Kind of...

Oh look - watermelon!  So you ball the watermelon and reserve some delicious watermelon juice. Which was kind of hard because this is winter watermelon which means it was grown in a warmer climate and then shipped up here at the expense of the environment. I know it has broadened my carbon footprint to Hummer-like expanses. But I promise not to make it again until summer when I can use local watermelon.

I'm lying...

 Now you take some tomatoes and chop them up. The recipe originally called for grape or cherry tomatoes, but I cooked them up earlier and so was forced to use the regular old kind. But they were delicious. 

Next you add some gorgonzola.

And some scallions.
Then you mixed it together. 
Make the dressing, watermelon juice, and these other ingredients. If you have a hard time getting the extra juice, if you smoosh up some melon it will turn to juice. It's practically a melon made out of water.
Once you add the dressing, you also put in cilantro. If you are the kind of person for whom cilantro tastes like soap, just go back to step one and don't even make this. Because it is perfect with cilantro and I don't want to live in a world where this salad doesn't have cilantro in it. I love cilantro. Even though every time I type it I have to ask spellcheck to fix it for me...

Now the recipe said, don't chill it and serve it within 1 hour of making it. But I am pretty sure that is because it isn't good cold and because the water from which the watermelon is made will make it all soggy. Because I am creative and didn't want to bust a gut eating 4 servings at once I put a vegetable steamer in a bowl and put the salad in it so that it wouldn't stew in its own juice. Then I just put it on the counter a half hour before I was going to eat it and it was room temp and just as spectacular tasting for dinner as it was for lunch.

Here is the recipe, followed by the nutritional info. Enjoy!

Watermelon and Tomato Salad

from the Minimalist at the New York Times.

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the watermelon, tomato, cheese, scallions and salt in a bowl.
  2. Whisk or blend together about 2 tablespoons of the watermelon juice, oil, vinegar and cayenne. To serve, dress the salad with this mixture and garnish with cilantro. Do not refrigerate and serve within 30 minutes.